II.J INCREASE OF STAFF. 49 the colleges, in the shape of an increased professoriate or sub-professoriate. I should not like to have to make even an estimate now of the staff that we may require in ten or twenty years, and I should very much deprecate any measure which, taking the present as the standard of our needs, should prevent us from securing such development as the occasion for it may arise. At the present moment we want a Professor of Later Ecclesiastical History, to take up the subject at the point at which the department assigned to the Regius Professor comes to an end. We want a permanent chair of Indian History. The labours of our friend the present Indian Reader have shown us how thoroughly that study, the importance of which can scarcely be over-rated by Englishmen, falls in with the current of our University work. I say a permanent chair, because that is a subject of permanent necessity, not a subject like palaeography or numismatology, in which the labours of one good professor may serve for two or three generations, and the endowment of the man is of equal importance with the endowment of the chair or study. It is the belief of a large class of scholars that we require a professorship of English History by itself ; and it is certainly desirable that no chance should be allowed of English History being without adequate representation. I think it is unlikely that that should be the case, or that both the Regius and Chichele Professors at the same time should devote themselves to Foreign History ; but it might as well be made certain, and English History is a subject which might well employ the energies of three or four professors. I am not, however, an advocate for tying down the History professors to particular branches of the subject ; I am sure that each will work best if he is left to devote himself to his own specially chosen department, and that, provided the whole field of teaching be sufficiently well covered, the more freedom that can be given, the better for both teacher and learner. E